


So Spake Albion

by akathecentimetre



Category: Jack the Giant Slayer (2013)
Genre: F/M, Gen, lifelong friendship, the healers are not amused, vague Anglo-Saxon history
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-24
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-03-19 00:18:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3589242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akathecentimetre/pseuds/akathecentimetre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Of friendship, duty, loyalty, growing up, and giants: or, a princess and her knight, and a knight and his queen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title of this fic came from a brief exploration of William’s Blake epic illustrated poem _Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion_ , because why not? I’m a history student so I also threw some random medieval and pre-medieval English history around a bit in this for the sake of flavor; hopefully it adds and doesn’t detract from the film’s peculiar mythology. Vague musical inspiration came from Barrington Pheloung’s ‘[Eirl Theme](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGfycW0fedQ)’ and Marc Streitenfeld’s ‘[Destiny](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuDeBAUzxg4).’ Hope you enjoy it!

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_Graphics by me, akathecentimetre_

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  **I.**

When Isabelle, Princess of Cloister, is five years old, her father transfers responsibility for her protection from her nursemaids over to the Guardians. Little Isabelle cries at first, startled into fear by the looming of tall men and dark armor, shining swords and mailed fists.

“You’re scarin’ her, sir,” one of them says eventually, as the king looks on in bemusement and the queen just barely stifles her giggles behind her hands. It is a knight named Crawe, gruff and kindly, who plucks Isabelle from the nervous hands of the Captain, who is an old veteran of wars but not of children, and tosses her gamely up into the air until she starts laughing. From then on, it is all easy.

Crawe is good to her, but he is not a friend. He has obligations of his own, as it turns out; when Isabelle asks him curiously why he doesn’t sleep in the barracks at the castle with the rest of the Guardians, he just lets out a bellowing laugh and says that he’d rather sleep with his wife than any of them, thank you very much. He pats her on the head and ushers her to her maids every evening, and beyond that, she thinks nothing much of her stern guards as she races around her home battling imaginary dragons.

When she is seven, Crawe brings a new Guardian with him one morning; a young man, with a head of unruly auburn hair and the barest beginnings of a beard, who looks raw enough that his armor doesn’t quite yet fit. He’s newly-knighted, clearly beside himself with pride at the fact that he now bears the symbol of BRAHMWELL REX on his arm, and he is apparently to be Isabelle’s new permanent guardian, since – as Crawe says grudgingly – she has become rather hard to keep track of.

She spends an entire day trying to lose Elmont, with no success whatsoever. He’s faster than he looks, and entirely unashamed of being seen running at full tilt after her in his armor, grinning as he clanks and skids around the corners she takes. He does it mostly in silence, giving her little bows and smiles every time he catches up, as though acknowledging a strong opponent.

Towards evening, she resorts to her last option. Flying around a bend, she raises the grate to the catacombs and wriggles through it before, she thinks, Elmont’s even realized she’s once again out of his sight. Scuttling along on her hands and knees, she reaches the burial ground in moments; she says a cheerful hello to the coffin of her great-great-great – how many greats was it? She can never remember – grandfather King Erik, and slides down to sit at his feet and tell him, for the twentieth time at least, how annoying it is to be followed around all the time. Soon enough, though, her usual litany is done, and so she takes out her usual accoutrements from the pouch on her dress – a match, a stub of candle taken from her chambers, and her favorite book about King Erik’s defeat of the giants – and settles down to read it to him aloud.

She’s halfway through the passage about the arrival of the giants – “ _With a bridge now before them to the world of men, a plague of great gi-ants de-scends –_ ” when footsteps, deliberate and heavy, suddenly echo through the gloom.

“Fee, fye,” comes a deep, booming voice, and for a moment Isabelle squeals and shoves herself closer to the wall. “Fo – ”

And then Elmont slips on the damp floor and lets out a curse which Isabelle _knows_ her mother would never want her to hear, and by the time he’s sheepishly said “Fum?” he is sprawled out in a most undignified heap at Isabelle’s feet, and she’s giggling like she hasn’t in weeks.

She tilts her head once she’s recovered her breath, and Elmont has hauled himself upright enough to sit crosslegged at her side. “How old’re you?”

“Twenty-two.”

She wrinkles her nose. “So old.”

“ _So_ old,” he agrees dramatically. “Old enough to take care of you, though, little one.”

“Maybe,” she says slyly. “Promise you won’t tell anyone else that I come down here?”

“As long as I know about it,” he grins. “I promise.” It is the first promise he ever makes her, and one she will remember for a long time.

When she is nine, Isabelle loses her mother. It takes a week or so for her to understand what exactly has happened – it’s something to do with the unbearable hush of the entire town and castle, with the reason why so many people are staying locked behind sturdy doors and holding cloths full of sweet herbs to their faces whenever they dare go outside; it’s why Crawe starts sleeping in the barracks, muttering that he doesn’t have anything to go home to, now; it’s why Elmont disappears for several days into the castle’s infirmary and when he comes out, he looks years older and his hands take a month to stop shaking.

When she does finally understand, she refuses to let anyone but her father and Elmont near her; she doesn’t even care, in the end, which of their shoulders it is she is crying into. She doesn’t leave her room for days.

 

**II.**

The Captain of the Guardians, the dour old Sir Alric, resigns his commission when Isabelle is twelve; he leaves to the tune of respected tributes of his men (if not their love) and disappears to the landed estates the king has given him for a reward for his service, not to be seen at court again. Before his retinue has even gotten through Cloister’s main gate, speculation as to who will replace him reaches a fever pitch. General Entin sidles biliously around the castle proclaiming to anyone who will listen that he’ll have an Army man ready for the job whenever the king asks (no doubt he intends to nominate himself, though that prospect is a laughable one); the king remains silent on the matter for a few days before proclaiming that there shall be a one-month trial period of the Guardians Alric has left behind and the best officers of the Army, and that each of them has that long to impress.

Isabelle finds the trials incredibly exciting; for while Elmont apparently has no desire whatsoever for the position, and neither does Crawe (“Got enough to do without being bloody _responsible_ ”), the leave they are given to (mostly) abandon their assigned posts for four weeks and use it in the pursuit of new skills, or indeed the satisfying demonstration of them, is too good to pass up – and so it is that Isabelle spends much of her time for that glorious summer month perched on the wellhead in the Guardians’ training courtyard, watching dozens of young men shout and wrestle and duel and shoot, and being treated as both their collective daughter and their queen.

She is well aware by now that she is growing up, and fast. She can read practically any book in the royal library in a couple of hours; she has imbibed everything she is meant to know of embroidery from her maids (and a bit of cooking besides, though sneaking her into the kitchens had apparently been too scandalous to be often repeated); her tutors and the abbey monks are satisfied with her grasp of Latin and history and of her interpretations of the Holy Book, though they occasionally scold her for a tendency to over-mystify the Lord’s teachings. She is a fast runner, and knows how to pinch and tickle and ride a horse (a pony, but never mind that) with the best of them.

She’s never seen anything like this, though – the sheer array of weaponry on display is frankly astounding, and the skill with which they are wielded is unparalleled. She sits cross-legged in the matted dirt and straw in her fine dresses, gaping, eagerly consuming the sweets she is brought by any knight who happens past the kitchens and, with a chuckle, remembers her, and just watches – and so hours and hours pass.

Some, like Crawe, use cunning and brute force to lay an opponent out flat. He is not the biggest knight in the world, but he is experienced, that much she knows, and he is the master of misdirection. She loses count of the times he waits, bored and disgruntled, as long as possible through an eager enemy’s charge before simply stepping aside and crashing down the unfortunate miscreant with a blow across the back. His laughter is hard and smirking, but never cruel as he helps them up, dresses them down for being a clodhead, and sends them on their way. Other knights are skilled in the use of their shields, wielding them like hammers and swords when they are otherwise disarmed; still others excel in their accuracy with a longbow, or daggers, or an axe (none of which they use on each other, of course, but the threat of them is enough). She’s never quite realized before how different they are – how personalized their armor with all the different patterns of studs and stripes of silver, how well-suited each man has made his personal possessions and his method of protection.

Elmont is good at _everything_ , which doesn’t seem fair at all. He can wield one sword or two with equal dexterity; it turns out he keeps multiple daggers about his person at all times which Isabelle had never been aware of, despite her constant use of him as a climbing frame in their day-to-day lives; he can use his shield to force much bigger knights backwards, he can shoot his favored crossbow one-handed without even looking. He is the target of much jealousy and admiration, that much Isabelle can tell – because she has them too, and Elmont is _so_ not going to get away with not teaching her all of it the second the trials are over.

This is also when she meets Gwyn, and finds herself in the odd position of making a friend for the first time since she met her mother. The various shenanigans of the Guardians mean, of course, that there are many bumps and bruises and hurts to be nursed, and if there’s any one person who’s best suited to roughhousing a bunch of adolescent or mentally adolescent men into quietude, the matron of the royal infirmary is that one. She is in her mid-twenties but hardly considered the less competent for her youth; she is thin and wiry and stronger than she looks, and her stare of arching disapproval as Isabelle physically drags Elmont or Crawe or whoever it is needs bandaging into her rooms at the end of each day could fell a giant.

“You are a great help, Princess,” she always says, bending to place a firm kiss on Isabelle’s forehead at the end of each visit as the offending knight scurries out, wide-eyed and relieved. “Don’t think you should stop visiting me even when your loving idiots are in good health.”

And so Isabelle does visit her, often with Elmont taking up his usual position outside Gwyn’s door until Gwyn tells him to stop hovering and come in to have some tea, for God’s sake, and Isabelle will chatter to her about how she’s going to learn how to shoot, and how to kill basilisks, and take on the King of Mercia in single combat until Elmont can’t take any more and snatches her up and carries her away, shrieking and kicking, from Gwyn’s bad influence. She could swear the both of them carry out the whole charade just to tease her.

It’s only when, while perusing a book about the duties of knighthood – because she will be a knight soon, she has no doubt of that, and she’d best learn all she can – that Isabelle, turning a page to a brightly-colored illumination, sees a strong paper profile of an ideal knight in shining armor who is the spitting image of Elmont, and realizes that he’s a man, now, and that she’s still a child.

It’s an odd thing for a twelve-year-old to realize: that her best friend, whom she’s treated as an equal for so long, is not only fifteen (fifteen!) years older than her, but he hadn’t even been a boy like her when they first met, and he certainly isn’t now. Elmont hasn’t grown any taller since she was seven, but he has put on bulk and taken on power; his eyes are bright and keen and have a good sense of strategy, and his voice has gained a swaggering lilt to it which Isabelle’s maids giggle over and sets his comrades into rude, raucous laughter. And it’s only now, too, that Isabelle notices his deference; his duty to her has taken on distance and propriety, even as he remains constantly at her side and as friendly and kind as he ever was. It means something, now, when he calls her Princess instead of Isabelle, and vice versa; the approval in her father’s eyes as he stands on a balcony above the training courtyard and picks out Elmont through the crowd now portends something important, as does his assessing smile when, as Isabelle rushes forward into his arms, Sir Elmont stops and dips into a perfectly respectful, graceful bow.

It’s like she hardly knows him at all, suddenly, and she doesn’t like it a bit.

Some of the competing knights, as the field starts to thin, have family come in from various provinces to support them in their challenge. No one comes for Elmont, which is when he tells her (only after she’s badgered him for two days about it, though he doesn’t seem to mind) that his father had been ennobled, but had lost most of his money through mismanagement of his lands and poor relations with his tenant farmers; by the time he’d sent his eldest and only son to Cloister to claw back some dignity for the family name most of that land had been sold, and the plague had done for the rest. He sounds puzzled as to what he should think of his father, but of his place he has no doubt: Sir Elmont’s home is in Cloister, and his duty is to become the finest knight of the realm that he can be.

By the end of the fourth week only ten Guardians remain in the hunt for the captaincy, winnowed down by exhaustion, cheerful acts of giving up, inconvenient injuries, or the intervention of the king. Now twenty officers from the Army come to join them; it makes sense, Isabelle supposes, that the larger group would propose more candidates, but she still can’t imagine that any of them could win a trial by combat with any of the Guardians. General Entin’s presence, stolid and eager to win a bet he has placed on a particular one of his champions, is likewise an unwelcome addition to the scene.

Within a day of the two groups training together while Entin and Brahmwell dine and observe from the balcony above, they are at each other’s throats. Isabelle sits on a saddle mount and watches them through it all, ignoring the disapproving gaze of her father, as the sparring becomes fiercer; though she knows that on some level this is all in jest and play, only testing how far each man can be pushed, there are enough near-injuries to make her wince or call out warnings to particular Guardians if she feels they are being treated unfairly. The Army men are good fighters for the most part, but she’s picked her side, and she intends to stick to it.

As evening falls and the king prepares to retire, Crawe, who is clearly fed up, calls over to the Army boys that they might as well settle this, so they should send over their best champion if they dare. Isabelle and every Guardian left rolls their eyes in unison, but Crawe will not be dissuaded and the Army men are clearly up for it; it also makes sense when Crawe, grinning, pushes a protesting Elmont into the center of the courtyard and shouts to the combatants to get en garde, for God’s sake, or did they want to look like cowards in front of the lady?

Isabelle whoops as Elmont charges. Now this is more like it! For a long moment she relishes in the fantasy she is now living – with Crawe laughing at her side and the king watching on intently from above, she is the Princess being fought over, and it feels wonderful.

Elmont doesn’t take long to dispatch the officer – despite the man’s superior reach and height, Elmont knows just how to disarm him, sending his sword flying, and pressing the point of a dagger into his ribs as a demonstration of Elmont’s superiority. He doesn’t belabor the point, but instead whirls away to accept the cheers of the Guardians, grinning, his arms spread wide; Isabelle runs to him, squeezes him around the middle.

“My champion!” she giggles happily, and for a moment he doesn’t scold her in that normal way he has of downplaying his own achievements for the sake of aggrandizing hers; she knows, then, that he will be the next Captain, and that all is right with the world.

Behind him, though, one of the Army men growls, and someone else, frustrated and tired of being beaten, shouts “Guardian pricks!” and rumbles start to grow – something slams into Elmont’s back, and he staggers into and over Isabelle, and before she can really figure out what’s going on she’s completely surrounded by screaming, kicking, scrapping men, furious and completely unaware of her or her safety. Her cloak is ripped from her shoulders by someone’s flying limb, dust from the churned-up ground flies into her mouth and eyes; she hears her father bellowing above her, and starts to scream.

But then suddenly everything goes dark, and warm, and vaguely quiet. She is huddled in a ball on the ground, with her cloak picked up again and thrown over her shoulders and head; it is Elmont who has wrapped himself around her and curled them both downwards, making sure she is no longer a target by mistake or intention. She looks up, shaking, and finds him smiling at her as the noise of the fight rages on around them; his armor is cool when she presses her cheek against it, wrapping her arms around him, and waits.

The next thing she knows is strong arms ripping her from Elmont’s protection, which makes her scream again, but she needn’t have worried – it is her father, resplendent and full of rage as he clasps her so close that it hurts, with a gibbering General Entin at his side.

“How dare you!” Brahmwell bellows, and as Elmont rolls awkwardly to one side and lurches to his feet, Isabelle sees from his shoulder that the Guardians and Army men alike have parted and are standing exhausted and ashamed in ragged little groups, glowering and spitting blood from their mouths into the packed earth. “Get out of my sight before I break your spurs one by one!”

Gwyn lifts Isabelle out of Brahmwell’s arms before she can see what the Guardians do in response; the matron hurries her quickly away, groaning a little even as she presses her hand against Isabelle’s face, against her shoulders, checking for any hurts. “My goodness, you’re getting big,” she soothes as they trip into the infirmary and Gwyn’s little collection of nurses start up out of their chairs and flutter closer to help. “Soon I shan’t be able to carry you at all. Oh no, dear one, hush – don’t cry – ”

But Isabelle can’t help it, and she stays sniffling and hiccupping in the bed into which she is laid until her father comes to see her, and then sobs anew at the anger on his face.

“Thank God you are alright,” the King murmurs, holding her close. “You should not have been there, my dear,” he adds, but when she draws back and opens her mouth to complain at his turning so quickly to her own fault in the matter he hushes her, pulls her back to him in apology, and simply sighs into her hair.

“It will take me some time to be happy with our soldiers again, I fear,” he says eventually, once Isabelle’s breathing has evened out and she feels capable of looking at him without blinking. “But I do have some news I think you will like, my darling. Today your Sir Elmont has proven himself more than capable of taking on the leadership of the Guardians – what do you think?” He’s smiling, and might even look proud. “I owe him a debt I can never repay, of that I am sure.”

Her assent is gladly but sleepily given; when she wakes in the morning she is still in the infirmary, probably to keep her within Gwyn’s careful watch, and Elmont is standing at the window at the foot of her bed, looking out over the castle grounds. When he turns to her she sees that there is something different about his armor: stamped into the black metal, turning it silver and grey, is the shape of a lion rampant.

“Hello, Captain,” she grins.

“Hello, Princess,” he says, gentle and warm, and everything is as it should be.

 

**III.**

When Isabelle is fifteen, her father and the majority of the Guardians ride to Mercia to be party to continuing peace negotiations between their warlike neighbor and their victim of the year. Cloister is secure enough, and strong enough, that the Mercians would think hard before attacking it; nevertheless, Isabelle worries. Or rather, she tries to, while enjoying her newfound freedom – it is so much easier to flit about the castle without her father’s looming presence threatening to appear around every corner, and she easily gives the slip to the handful of Guardians and a grumpy General Entin left at home.

Elmont leaves with the King, hale and excited, and departs with only a raised eyebrow in her direction, as though he’s well aware of what she has planned. She misses him, as the first week turns into the second and summer starts to edge nervously into autumn, the fields starting to ripen and be threshed; but she does not worry for him. She’s never needed to, and doesn’t intend to start now.

On the tenth day, with the King’s return expected any moment, she sleeps in late, yawns her way through her maids’ dressing of her, and decides to spend her last hours blissfully alone in a wistful, moping walk along the battlements, trailed at a discrete distance by two younger Guardians who, no doubt, are looking forward to being relieved of their tiresome duty.

Just before dusk, there is movement at the distant edge of the forest, and she sighs, stretching her arms and chin out over the warmed stone of a parapet. “Hello, Father,” she mumbles, and closes her eyes.

It is only the shout of one of her guards which rouses her, and even then she has to blink the heat slowly out of her eyes for a moment until she realizes something is wrong. The king’s horse approaches, and those of his loyal knights – but there are too few of them, and they are racing forward at a gallop rather than at the sedate walk her father favors, and she cannot breathe. She turns, charges down into the castle, then out into the town, pushing her way through the crowded streets – for once, her Guardians are of a like mind to her, and they run faster than she even in their heavy armor, shoving unfortunate and confused peasants out of their way as they storm through the marketplace – Isabelle does not have the strength of will to stop and apologize for herself. She only knows she must get there, she must _know_ –

The royal party careens into the outer courtyard in a mad rush, the king’s black horse in front, squealing and covered in froth. Isabelle skates to a stop, stares at Brahmwell, and for a moment, all is right with the world – because he is unhelmed, but he bears no visible injury, and there is the promise of vengeance and fury in his eyes.

But then his horse turns to the side, and Elmont, blood caked in his hair and his armor split in two across his spine, slides soundlessly from the king’s back into Crawe’s waiting arms.

Isabelle barely feels the strong kiss Brahmwell plants on her forehead before he hurries away to the infirmary at his Captain’s side. An hour later, she is still standing there, and night is falling, when the final, small, bedraggled party of the missing Guardians comes through the gate – they are on foot, splattered in their horses’ blood, and between them they draw a cart on which, silent and limp, they bring the linen-wrapped body of Sir Bald’s younger brother Carolus.

Isabelle barely sleeps; in the morning, after going to see her father, who is deep in council considering the appropriate reaction to the ambush – it was the Mercians, they are sure of it, though finding proof will be hard – and receiving his kiss, his blessing, and his concerned gaze, she makes her way slowly and fearfully to the infirmary.

At first, it seems there was nothing for her to be worried about, after all. She can hear Elmont complaining from the corridor, where two of his men are standing a respectful (and more than a little amused, she can tell by the elation of relief in their eyes) guard, and Gwyn is giving as good as she gets.

“You’ve worked your magic, I wish you would take the compliment and let me up – ”

“If you so much as twitch, I shall drug you. Again.”

“Witch.”

“Brute.”

It’s still shocking, though, when Isabelle picks up the nerve to sidle through the heavy wooden door: still a shock to see Elmont so pale, to see him at all _immobile_ , to catch sight of the flecks of dried blood not quite washed out from his scalp and the mass of bandages strapped around his torso. He notices Isabelle immediately, and nearly starts up, but something – pain, probably, but there is something else, something dark and guilty and stricken in his eyes – lays him flat again almost instantly, and all he can offer her is an apologetic, crooked smile from his pillow.

 _Carolus_ , she thinks, and can’t even imagine what he must be feeling. He loves his men like brothers, like he loves her and the king and Cloister. Where Bald is, she can’t guess.

“Princess,” he says, and at least he sounds like himself as Gwyn swishes back into the room from her pantry and bobs a brief curtsey. “I hope I didn’t worry you overmuch.”

“You certainly did,” she says hotly, and to her surprise she _is_ actually angry, she’s damn well _furious_ at him for putting her through this. (She is well aware of the selfishness of this thought, but to hell with her intentions.) “Don’t you _ever_ – ”

She comes to a choking halt, and Gwyn rescues her. “ – do that again,” the matron finishes, swatting Elmont on the shoulder. She fetches a chair, and ushers an abruptly weak-kneed Isabelle into it. “Now, on to pleasanter things. Your stupid heroics will at least consolidate your place in the songs and tales of Cloister,” she says sarcastically, with a roll of her eyes and the smallest of winks at Isabelle. “Tell the Princess all about the glorious honors you shall receive for your bravery.”

“Gwyn,” Elmont groans, and laboriously pulls the pillow over his head; Isabelle finds herself giggling despite herself. “I’d trade any medals or favors for this not bloody _hurting_ quite so much. Did you put pepper in your poultices?”

“At least you’ll be getting some pretty new decorations,” Gwyn says, continuing on mercilessly – Elmont’s armor is sitting on another chair at the other side of his bed, and Gwyn taps at it with one long finger. “You’re amassing quite the collection.”

“What happened, Elmont?” Isabelle asks, re-finding her voice and, surprisingly, feeling the stir of her normally precocious curiosity. “Which badges will you be receiving?”

Her words die away when Elmont’s face, as it emerges from the sheets, is drawn into stark lines, his expression utterly serious. “Only those which denote failure.”

Isabelle pauses for a long time to compose her thoughts. “Surely not,” she says eventually, attempting to keep her tone light. “To gain rewards for failure seems a questionable practice.”

“Not necessarily,” he responds, and something of a fond smile twists his lips at her philosophizing. “Sometimes the reminder of failure is just what one needs to never fail again.”

A week later, the only indication that Isabelle has that Elmont is recovered enough to attend upon the king is that when she emerges from her chambers, early enough that there is usually no activity in the courtyard, she instead sees a trickle, then a flood of black-clad Guardians making their way towards the Great Hall. She takes shortcuts, peers around columns and doors and tapestries, and finally slips through a side-door into the shadows well to the side of her father’s throne just in time to see Elmont bow his head, then kneel, before Brahmwell, who is dressed in resplendent formal robes. Two of the assembled knights, who stand in rigid rows below the dias, step forward; as three pages scuttle around the king, they raise Elmont’s arms, unbuckle his cuirass, and lay it carefully on a stand before the king before retreating, heads bowed.

“Sir Elmont of Cloister, Captain of the Guardians,” Brahmwell intones. The first page scurries forward, sets a long-stemmed stamp against the black metal, and Brahmwell takes up the silver hammer placed in his hand by General Entin. “Reminding you in humility that though your soul is immortal and in the sight of God,” he intones sternly, “your body is subject to His whim and His purposes: this scroll, signifying that you have been wounded in the service of your sovereign.”

He brings the hammer down with a sharp crack, and the armor rings out like a bell. Behind her concealing pillar, Isabelle shivers.

A second page steps forward; a second time, Brahmwell lifts the hammer. “Reminding you in sorrow,” he begins slowly, and this time Isabelle sees Elmont swallow hard, even as he keeps his eyes fixed on a point above the king’s shoulder. “That your work is imperfect in the sight of God, and that you should forever strive to serve Him better: this wolfshead, signifying that under your leadership, a good man’s life has been lost. May you remember him and his significance always.”

The phrases are poetic, hypnotic, even, coming close on each other’s heels, as is the clang of the hammer, the dull peal of the newly-printed cuirass – there is very little in them that brings home how much they make Isabelle want to cry.

Brahmwell turns to the third page before the startled lad can step forward, and takes up the third stamp himself. Something shifts in the crowd of gathered Guardians, as though they cannot help but draw together, and closer to the throne.

“This seal has not been bestowed in many years,” Brahmwell says quietly, almost musing – Isabelle has to lean closer to be sure of her father’s words. “Not in my lifetime, in fact. Such is the peace and prosperity we have enjoyed in this kingdom,” he adds, louder, and with a fond, fierce look at his knights. “Such is the protection my Guardians have afforded me.”

A ragged cheer, tired but happy, rises from the back of the group; Isabelle can see that Crawe is smiling, though there is little mirth in his face.

“Given in gratitude,” Brahmwell announces, setting the stamp against the armor once again, “and with pleasure, from one friend to another, for you have earned such a place in my heart: this seal, signifying an act of bravery that saves the life of the King.”

He brings the hammer down, and Isabelle’s blood suddenly turns to ice.

She can’t help it – something like a strangled scream escapes her, and every eye in the room immediately turns in her direction. She only just catches sight of Elmont’s stricken expression, and hears Brahmwell’s plea for someone to bring her to him, before she whips round the corner, nips through the door she’s left open, and runs.

It seems only seconds before she’s scrabbling at the familiar grate and dropping down into the darkness of the catacombs, the worried shouts and pounding feet of the Guardians fading away above her. She crawls into the niche that houses Erik’s sarcophagus, presses her trembling hands into the cool stone, and shakes.

_That’s what happened. My father nearly died. **My father could have died.**_

For a long moment, Isabelle is not sure what about it terrifies her most: that her father was in danger, that she had never properly considered this inevitability before, or the knowledge, which is suddenly huge and heavy and throbbing in her head, that one day she will be Queen, and she will be alone.

She doesn’t know how much time passes before she hears careful footsteps echoing through the gloom, and knows that Elmont has come for her. She’s started crying at some point, so when she looks up he is blurry and gray, and the only reflection of him is from his armor.

That damned armor. He’s not wearing gauntlets or pauldrons, but he’s wearing the cuirass with the fact of her father’s fallibility stamped directly above his heart, and as he kneels down and extends his hands to her Isabelle _knows_ that he could have left it above ground, could have hidden it away from her, but no: this is what he is, now, what he has always been, and it’s high time she learned this lesson.

“Princess,” Elmont murmurs. “I’m so sorry.”

Isabelle sniffs, and wipes ineffectually at her eyes, before fitting her palms into Elmont’s and using them to lever them both upright, feeling young, gangly, and entirely unprepared for anything. “No need, Elmont,” she sighs. “I did insist on knowing.” She does know now, she understands – she understands what that particular cut across Elmont’s back means; that the ambush was not meant for him, but for someone ostensibly much more important, and she understands now what he had done to prevent it.

He tilts his head, assessing. “And how do you find it? Knowing?”

“Dreadful,” she says flatly, and to her surprise, Elmont smiles.

“I would have spared you, but – ” His hesitation is uncharacteristic, but also, somehow, reassuring. “It occurred to me that perhaps it’s for the best.”

Isabelle sighs, and realizes she is exhausted – it is an unfamiliar feeling, this weight of care for others, when she has spent her entire life being told only to mind out for herself – and when she speaks, her words feel similarly strange on her tongue. “Keep him safe for me?”

“Always,” Elmont says, instant and firm. “And you.”

 

**IV.**

Just after Isabelle’s sixteenth birthday, Lord Roderick arrives from the southern provinces to take up his new position as the king’s provost. By the end of the year, he has taken on the responsibilities of most of the high offices of the kingdom, and a few days before Christmas, Brahmwell frowns and, lifting his head from a paltry list of names of men suitable for his daughter to marry (a list drawn up by Roderick, the significance of which does not dawn on Isabelle until much later), decides that once Isabelle reaches her majority, she and Roderick will marry.

Isabelle locks herself in her rooms for four days, and screams at anyone who comes to try to bring her out, including her father. Brahmwell gives her a speech, a new one, one about how he is not getting any younger and that all he wants is her security for the sake of Cloister – for the sake of Cloister, _for the sake of Cloister_ , good God, she is starting to hate those words and she knows that is no good thing – which makes her retreat into a corner and sob until she can no longer hear him.

The Guardians are there outside her door, she knows that much. She hears Elmont’s voice every few hours, soliciting their report. He takes his own watches; he unlocks the door with a master key he keeps hidden away in his armor but, mercifully, never attempts to speak to her; unseen, he shoves plates of warm bread and cups of wine around the doorjamb, then closes and locks the door again, maintaining the illusion that she is the one who has hidden herself away.

When she wobbles out again, Elmont is waiting for her with apology and anger in his eyes. He fetches her maids, ensures that no one approaches while she cleans herself and is dressed in sober, soft silks, and then escorts her to the Great Hall with a look on his face furiously daring anyone to step within twenty feet of her, his hand firmly on his swordhilt. He cannot, it seems, bring himself to look at her; likewise, she dares not meet his gaze. Even her relief at knowing that she is not alone in her hatred for her being bartered like a piece of meat does little to console her.

Roderick is with the king when they arrive, and, not being able to go any further, Elmont gives a stiff bow and retreats a few paces while Isabelle hesitantly continues on. There is something of a kindness in Roderick’s face as he watches her, she realizes with a brief relief – pitiful, condescending kindness, but kindness nonetheless, and that is something to be grateful for at least. Brahmwell, too, is initially apologetic, and clasps her hands with surety.

“Perhaps I should not have arranged this until you were in fact of age,” he sighs. “But what’s done is done. Lord Roderick is a good man, my dear – you know the good work he has done for us and our kingdom already. And one day, you shall make each other happy.”

“So sayeth the king,” she murmurs, and senses Roderick’s wince, and the rising of her father’s anger.

“Well,” he huffs, dropping her hands. “I have at least made concessions for your sake, Isabelle. Roderick has agreed to make his home here with you once you and he are king and queen, rather than in the south – and I’m sure he will not object to your continuing to keeping the Guardians in your service.”

He has surprised Roderick with this, she can tell – something nasty and twisted flashes across the Provost’s long face. “Sire?” he queries innocently; behind her, Isabelle hears Elmont shift in his armor.

“Well, their loyalties are tied to my bloodline, Lord Roderick,” Brahmwell says casually, the matter already settled. “Wherever Isabelle goes once she is Queen, the Guardians and Elmont go with her. I have no doubt they shall serve you well.”

“Thank you, your majesty,” Elmont says, and bows low to accept the compliment. It feels like some sort of victory, Isabelle thinks, relishing the queasy smile Roderick offers up in response.

She bows her head in farewell as the king waves a hand to dismiss them all; it is time she came to terms with this, she decides suddenly, and determine how best she is to preserve herself in the face of this future. By the time she has passed Elmont and reached the doorway she is in a full flounce, and only the sound of Roderick’s voice brings her to a halt just outside in the corridor; stepping quickly to one side, she turns back to listen, and doesn’t like what she hears.

“I must congratulate you, Sir Elmont,” Roderick begins, quiet and oily. “You hold more sway with the king than I realized, to be able to force your way into the union between Isabelle and I.”

“The Princess has been my charge for over a decade, Lord Roderick,” Elmont says, emphasizing her title and therefore Roderick’s misuse of her name. This, she suddenly understands, is what he has been doing in the hours when he was not guarding her door – he was making sure he could convince the king to keep the Guardians with her. He sounds deadly, Isabelle realizes – colder, and more threatening, than she has ever thought him capable of. He sounds _dangerous_ , and it is for her sake. “I would hardly leave her now.”

“Of course,” Roderick simpers. “I suppose, given their condition, the Guardians are by far the best men for the task of protecting a young girl, after all.”

“Condition?” Elmont asks mildly.

“Oh – I’m sorry, was I misinformed? I _had_ heard that – well, a princess in the company of so many young men – I thought it quite a reasonable precaution that King Brahmwell might choose – or perhaps, enforce a policy of – ”

Isabelle has to cover her mouth to stop herself from gasping aloud. What Roderick is implying is not only insulting, but good God – how _dare_ he think Cloister would – ?

It appears Elmont, too, has had enough of this, for the next thing she hears is the telltale creak of Elmont’s gauntlet as his hand tightens around Roderick’s wrist. “My men are as whole as you or I,” Elmont snarls, his voice dropping an octave. “They devote themselves to this life of service for the love of their kingdom alone. You would be wise to remember that we will protect it against _any_ threat, Lord Roderick – whether from foreigners, or any traitor in our midst.”

“Have a care, Captain,” Roderick says, almost sweetly. “The Guardians might be here to stay, but our marriage contract mentions no names of anyone in _particular_ I might choose to have serve us.”

He chuckles, then, and with the tiniest of scuffles, Isabelle can hear that he has released himself from Elmont’s grip. “Don’t you have duties to attending to?” Roderick needles. “Or no – I’m sorry. Just the one duty: running after a wayward child.”

Elmont nearly growls, but Roderick has taken the chance to escape – his low laughter fades, as do his footsteps, and Elmont storms out of the hall and past Isabelle with eyes fixed straight ahead and furious. She’s never quite realized before, she realizes, how frightening he can be. What he must be like on a battlefield, she realizes, she can’t even imagine.

She clears her throat, and he spins to face her, his expression only softening when he recognizes her face. “Ready?” she asks lightly, making no sign that she has heard what she did, and he smiles and bows his head; the smile, rarely, does not meet his eyes.

“Your highness,” he murmurs, and they fall into step. She now lives, she thinks, as she steps out into the sunshine of the courtyard, in an entirely new realm.

By the time she turns seventeen, she is sneaking out of the castle at least once a week. She has an entire collection of nondescript cloaks and dresses hidden at the bottom of one of her chests, and at least two of her maids sworn to secrecy as far as her father is concerned; unfortunately, they are not so immune to Elmont’s charms, and by the time he stops her for the fifth time at the sidegate or the back door of the cathedral’s western chapel or once, memorably, in the gatehouse by the main portcullis, she is thoroughly fed up.

She’s never hit him before, but she does now, just once – she shoves him away from her when he’s bringing her back to her rooms with his hand on her elbow, and for the way he stops dead she might as well have struck him across the face.

“Elmont,” she says eventually, glaring at the ground through her tears, her hands balled into fists by her sides. God, she is just so _tired_ of this, of what she is becoming. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have – ”

“Shall we make a deal, Princess?” he says, gentler than she deserves, before she can finish. “You do not travel beyond the city walls. In return, I will wait for two hours before Crawe and I come to find you.”

He pauses, even as her heart leaps. “It’s not much, and I will still insist upon your being careful and discreet, but – ”

“Are you joking?” Isabelle breathes, and throws herself at him with a squeal of delight. “Two hours is a _lifetime!_ Thank you, Elmont.” _Thank you_.

For a while, everything seems easier. So much can be done in two hours – a long walk through the town, a visit to the stables, even just a long, drowsy afternoon in the library entirely alone, with no attendants, reading again and again her favorite old tales – it revives her spirits, reminds her that she can have purpose. With no arguments remaining between them, Elmont’s laughter returns; Crawe’s familiar shakes of the head at her wanderings take on a certain fondness, and even some of the younger Guardians begin to call her by name. Avoiding Roderick is easy, now that she has permission to slip away from his presence unaided and only reunite with her knights once they are excused from the king’s presence; in his absence, even the Lord Provost and his frankly disturbing servant, Wicke, don’t seem so overbearing after all.

But then there are merely two weeks left until she turns eighteen, and then one week, and then three days, and suddenly, as she wakes up the morning after the celebrations with her head musty and heavy from wine, the necessity of planning her wedding is upon her, and everything turns ashen. She has no thought of the boy in the marketplace who defended her honor when she is seated on Crawe’s horse and riding home with Elmont at her side; instead, all she can think of is how this was it, this was her last day of freedom, and it has finally happened that Elmont cannot allow this anymore – not only because of her impending nuptials, but because she knows he witnessed the harassment she endured at the hands of the curious play-goers, and the shock of it has hardened him into repression.

He is conversing quietly at the end of the corridor with one of his knights, probably arranging a stricter guard of her quarters, when Isabelle slips through the shadows in her trousers and cloak in the opposite direction and sneaks out of the castle for what she thinks must be the last time. If she were less frightened, she’d be ashamed of the depth of her betrayal of him.

Jack is entirely unexpected.

Is that what she has been looking for? It feels good, if it is.

Being torn miles up into the air by a giant beanstalk, being completely and entirely lost, and then getting tossed into a cage by ravenous giants, on the other hand, definitely _doesn’t_ feel so good. She is exhausted from a terrified lack of sleep by the time she is brought into the midst of them, ready to shriek and pressing herself as far away from their grasping hands as she can at the back of her cage; all she can think is please, please, let being eaten be quick; let it not hurt.

When Elmont and Crawe are brought in and tossed at Fallon’s feet, trussed and battered, it all gets infinitely worse. They are angry and worried, taut with the need to stand and fight and frustrated that they cannot; once again, she is struck by how unnatural it looks for them to be so helpless.

She tries to focus on Elmont’s voice when Crawe is lifted up to the giant’s filthy mouth – “Look away, Isabelle!” he shouts, _Look away_! – but she can’t, she can’t, she can’t believe this is happening, that this is all her fault for running away. Crawe’s armor splatters into a pile next to Elmont’s squirming, kicking body, and she collapses back to cry.

Compared to this, Roderick’s betrayal feels inevitable and inconsequential.

Once in the giants’ kitchen Jack’s arrival doesn’t make her feel safe, but he does give her hope, and that is the best thing she’s had for a long time. It’s a new experience for both her and Elmont, she knows, for them to have their lives in anyone else’s hands, but Jack manages it pretty bloody well in the end, and in the forest she finds herself taking stock of him, now that she has the leisure to, very carefully. Not wanting to intrude on Elmont’s grief for Crawe, and saving her own for later, she realizes with some astonishment that Jack loves her as much as she has ever known, indeed as she _has_ known from many people in her life – but despite Elmont’s care, Crawe’s unquestioning respect, even her father’s unquestioned affection, none of them have ever been able to approach loving her with anything else but an unconscious opinion that she needs to be protected; that they are all to play their roles, and that will never change.

Jack has no such expectations. He is guileless, couldn’t doubt her or himself even if he tried, and offers whatever he has, even down to the press of yarrow against her arm, so freely that it takes her breath away. If this is the true love she’s read about in her stories, she could very happily get used to it.

Elmont’s announcement on the clifftop that he will remain to find Roderick makes her blood run cold. He is staying to kill, or be killed, and there is nothing she will be able to do to stop any of it.

He is entirely Elmont in this moment; the look of calm acceptance on his face when he realizes that, despite his misgivings, Jack has made Isabelle happy, is more approval than she could ever have hoped for; his handing Jack the Guardian badge he has borne for more than ten years is both the perfect farewell and an act of kindness so overwhelming she can barely speak.

“Come back to us,” she whispers, and his hands tightening around her shoulders feels like a promise, even though both of them are aware they cannot guarantee anything.

“I will,” he says, and as she and Jack slide down into the waterfall the last thing Isabelle sees of him is his back as he turns towards the woods.

 

**V.**

It is characteristic of Elmont, Isabelle realizes much later, that the greatest services he ever does her do not involve his sword.

In the aftermath of the giants’ submission, her father gives her leave to ride with Jack back to the newly-grown beanstalks – to be the face of the Crown before the shocked, elated people gathered there, and, as Erik’s heir, order the giants to climb and depart. She goes with pride, and a terrified exhaustion singing in her veins, and cannot help clutching at Jack’s hand when, as she is about to mount her horse, she sees Brahmwell’s eyes press inward into a frown as he looks hard at the rusted crown on Jack’s head.

She knows exactly what he is thinking. It’s not the usurpation of a power he might have had, per se, that irks him, but the young man who now bears it – she can sense it, the slow approach of those old arguments, of the inevitable rebuke, of misunderstandings and censure and Jack’s imminent departure.

As they ride slowly back together from the soon-to-be-demolished stalks to the ruined castle, with throngs of cheering peasants surrounding them – Jack blushes hard, scratches at his head ruefully under the edge of the crown – Isabelle wants nothing more than to run away again, to keep this moment whole and precious.

But return they must; they ride into the courtyard, then into the grounds of the ruined castle, and there find a makeshift camp of tents, the king’s arms clearly visible on his – and, to Isabelle’s surprise, there is a second large tent, too, and a few battered Guardians usher Jack away from her towards it. He follows them with a wary glance back at her, but otherwise makes no protest; she is left alone, then, to go to her father, and slowly, she does.

Brahmwell waits for her with a platter of bedraggled bread and vegetables; she suspects it will be some time before the populace and countryside have recovered enough to furnish the royal table with what they have been used to. She takes it nonetheless, and gladly – when she pauses for long enough to look up at her father, the look on his face stops her cold with surprise.

He looks… _penitent_. And happy, and confused.

She swallows, rinses her mouth with the sour wine. “Father?”

“I feel I owe you an apology, my child,” he says eventually, slowly. He has shed his cloak, and sits next to her in his armor, his gauntlets discarded and clammy hands gently taking her own, which are caked with dust and grime. “Will you but answer me one question?”

“Yes?”

“Do you love him? The farmboy?”

All the breath escapes her lungs. How, how has this become so easy? For the first time in her life, is speaking the truth about to be enough?

“I do.”

She speaks the words, feels the _fact_ of them flood through her, and watches her king’s expression clear as though he has been granted some sort of enlightenment. Suddenly, he does not look tired at all.

“Then it is settled,” he pronounces. “He has proved himself worthy. I needed only your assurance to know all was well.”

“I don’t – ” She feels curiously like babbling. What on earth – “Father, what do you mean?”

“I have heard much of the young man,” he says, smiling. “From a most reputable source. One who would not hesitate to give praise when and where it is so richly deserved.”

Isabelle cannot help but gasp, and her hands flutter away from Brahmwell’s. “Where is he?”

“In the infirmary. I’m sure he would appreciate a visit.”

She finds Elmont in the firm grip of Gwyn’s not-so-tender cares (not so tender because Isabelle can see that she is furious, and grieving, and not prone to allow any upset in her work after the day they’ve all had). He’s stripped down to his shirt, armor dumped in a haphazard pile next to his cot, and letting out a most undignified squawking noise as Gwyn maneuvers one of his arms into a sling.

“ _Why_ I even bother – can’t _imagine_ how you thought fighting on with a sprained wrist was a _bloody good idea_ – ”

“ _Giants_ , woman!” Elmont growls, and continues halfheartedly trying to wrestle free, though as Isabelle gets closer, twisting and tripping through the rows of beds – so many, so many beds full of so many men – she can see instantly how utterly spent he is. Bruises pepper his face and arms, there is a cut above his eye, both his hands are bandaged against she knows not what; worst of all, perhaps, are the vivid red punctures on his neck and chin, their cause mystifying but undoubtedly painful.

“Oh, those?” Gwyn says, catching both Isabelle’s presence and the direction of her look. Elmont swivels to face her, too, and his eyes open wide. “Yes, I suppose he also forgot to mention that Roderick attempted to decapitate him with a flail?”

“ _Gwyn_ ,” he says sharply, all hint of playfulness abruptly fled from his voice. The matron falls back with a huff, and a rough stroke of irritation and desperate fondness down Elmont’s grimy cheek, before she retreats, her nurses flocking to her as she hurries to another patient; they are alone, suddenly, Elmont sitting sheepishly with his wrist tucked across his chest, and Isabelle swaying where she stands.

“You convinced my father,” she says, dumbly. “About Jack.”

Elmont’s face creases with what she knows is genuine confusion, and that only makes her love him more. “I fail to see why I needed to _convince_ him of anything – ”

“Oh, shut up,” she breathes, and throws herself into his uninjured arm. _Here_ , she knows, _here it is: this is what love, given with no expectation, feels like._

She can only hope, she thinks wistfully – as Elmont sighs and tucks into her shoulder like he did on the clifftop, secure and content – that she is capable of something as pure as this.

 

**VI.**

It takes a month to fashion a new gate, forge a new portcullis, rebuild the walls and clean all of the scum of oil, blood and fetid giant’s sweat from the moat; clearing the land as far as the treeline takes another two months, and altogether, it takes a full six months to construct a new castle. It is ugly, compared to the accrued elegance of a few hundred years of Isabelle’s former home; the new stone keep is sturdy, however, and secure, and spacious. Jack takes to the construction like a fish to water, as she suspected he might – the leap from working solely with his hands to working with both hands and his mind makes him flourish. When Isabelle is not taking the time to plan their wedding, as she is expected to do, she joins him and finds intense pleasure in creating something that will be _theirs_.

While they recreate a kingdom, Elmont recreates men. With the double loss of General Entin eaten and the subversive chaos wreaked by Roderick, the Army and Guardians alike come close to floundering – but it is clear from the very first day that Elmont strides menacing and determined out of the infirmary, with Gwyn shouting in vain at his back, that he does not intend to lose either of them.

The sight of them all in the courtyard is something to behold. They come flocking to him from everywhere – young squires, first and second and third sons desperate for adventure who are tempered quickly into desires more honorable; peasant boys, tall and whippet-strong like Jack, whose farms were trampled and whose mills were snapped up like twigs, who have nothing to fight for and come to Elmont to find a cause.

It takes three weeks, what with the demands of swordwork, training to ride (and take care of) horses, and the intricacies of archery, for Elmont to organize a funeral of sorts for his fallen brothers. It might have been worth it, though, for all of his new young men to be there – for the courtyard to be ablaze with the light of torches and their reflection off of the King’s and Isabelle’s golden armor alike; for Elmont to step forward and recite, in a strong, unwavering voice, from memory, the names of each of his lost comrades. Isabelle watches the new Guardians-in-training sober overnight, watches their eyes harden and their loyalty sprout, their sudden uncomprehending and unconscious sense of duty and their absolute certainty that they will follow their Captain anywhere, even into death.

Brahmwell turns gentle, in these strange months. Isabelle spends more time with him than she thinks she has ever done in her life, marveling and indeed wondering, vaguely and unsettlingly confused, at her discovery of this man whom she loves, whom she thinks has always been there for her, but just out of her reach. Jack takes care of him with her, inhabits rather than merely play-acts the part of an honorable and honored son; when Brahmwell reaches out to take one of each of their hands in his, his skin feels taut and dry, thin.

Six months after they cut down the final stalks, the new castle is pronounced finished. The next morning, Brahmwell does not wake from his slumber.

Isabelle spends some time not feeling anything.

Jack and Elmont bring her back together; Jack with his hands, Elmont with words. Jack’s hands cup hers, rub warmth into them, remind her that she has a sense of touch. Elmont’s words drag her back into the light.

“I am not in the habit of asking you for anything, Princess. But I ask you this now – I ask you to be my Queen.” Elmont could have shouted, could have held up any comparison he cared to to remind her that her loss is not so much, after all, compared to what he and so many others has suffered – but he is Elmont, and she is Isabelle, so of course he does not. “Your Captain asks this boon,” he whispers, and she takes a deep breath and stands.

She is crowned the next day, and formally announces in the same moment that Jack is her Prince Consort. Elmont stands ramrod-straight at the head of the black-clad Guardians, and even in the semi-darkness of the damaged cathedral their armature gleams; their cheers make the stained-glass windows shiver.

With little else to occupy them, as the work to repair the giants’ destruction continues gathers steam and spreads itself among the people, plans for the Queen’s wedding to Jack the Giant Slayer continue apace. Barely a month after her father is buried, the first guests start to arrive from kingdoms far and wide, burying political and military animosities in order to slake their curiosity of what on earth happened in Cloister that giants ( _giants?_ ) stormed the castle and the Queen is marrying a farmer.

Isabelle herself finds that apart from the random, sharp pain of her father’s loss announcing itself at will, she has never been happier. Elmont, too, recaptures much of his former spirit and wit the further his new troops progress; she can see his satisfaction in his eyes, in his gait, in the lift of his head and the spring in his still-youthful step. He relishes the challenge of welcoming the delegation from Mercia, a hard-bitten and brutal-looking bunch, and on the first night of their visit merrily regales them with tales of the scars he bears from their failed attempt to kill him. (He can only imply their guilt, of course, but Isabelle sniggers into her drink at him nonetheless; Elmont’s tongue can run rings around them, and leaves them staring wildly up and down the long table, fingering their swords under the table but never daring to demand recompense.)

Two days before her wedding, being pinned into her wedding finery by her harassed maids for any final changes, she finds herself overflowing. _How can one being contain such happiness?_ Her anticipation makes her itch and fidget; she wants everyone she knows to experience this, to share in her distraction.

She runs to Elmont as soon as she is free of the fitting, finding him dueling with Roger, a young man recruited from an impoverished noble family much like Elmont’s own. They are laughing and exercised into exhaustion – when Isabelle pulls Elmont away to speak to him Roger watches them go with a wistfulness born of hero worship, a sentiment Isabelle understands all too well.

“Elmont, you should marry Gwyn.”

He splutters out the water he had been scooping up from the communal well. “I _beg_ your pardon?”

“You should marry Gwyn! I mean, you’d drive each other out of your wits at first, but she’s lovely, and _you’re_ lovely, and I know how important her friendship is to you, and you – ”

She wavers to a halt, gulping in the face of the gentle amusement which suffuses across his face, erasing his previously thunderstruck expression.

“ – you deserve to be happy,” she finishes weakly.

“Now then, Queen Isabelle,” he says, his hands on his hips. She knows that tone – he’s used it to tease her since she was five, but it is never less than truthful. “May I ask whatever made you think that I am in any way _un_ happy?”

“That’s no excuse!” she protests. “You could be even happier, I know it. There must be someone who is – who is deserving of your love, and who could – ”

He just stands there grinning toothily at her, and a few minutes later, she gives up. By the end of the day, she has vented her excess amours into a successful effort to arrange the marriage of a stableboy and a cookery maid whom she’s seen blushing at each other for weeks, and considers it a job well done.

The following day the growing, bustling court welcomes a final set of visitors – the Queen of East Anglia arrives with several attendants and a coterie of ladies, but without her husband, who is engaged in protracted skirmishes with Mercia (again) at home. She is in her early thirties, lithe and red-haired, and within half an hour of dinner beginning has confided to Isabelle and Jack – with a thoroughly wicked, gleeful smile – that, her husband being a generation older than her and stricken with gout, she finds it most invigorating to be in the company of such a fine young couple as themselves, and to find herself away from her kingdom and obligations. Isabelle cannot help but like her, sensing some sort of kindred spirit – or rather, a version of herself that might have been – and when this other Queen presses her hands, laughs “Call me Emma!” and whirls them both away to join the after-dinner dancing, she goes willingly.

The next morning, a glorious haze envelops Isabelle’s mind. By noon, she and Jack are married. By evening, she is ready to fall asleep; by midnight, even the Guardians have joined in the banqueting and in the middle of the great hall Elmont and Queen Emma are stepping through an elegant carola, clasping hands and laughing and fast approaching the point of no return.

Isabelle and Jack retire for their wedding night to the toasts of hundreds; Elmont, with Emma’s arm slipped through his, sends two of his most trusted men to guard their suite. His smile is the only one Isabelle needs, and she gets it a hundredfold.

Their first night together is not perfect, but it does not need to be. If there is one thing Isabelle has learned in the past year it’s that she has more time than she would ever have expected or wanted to chase her dreams, and that what will be must be treasured: and so she does.

She leaves Jack dozing and warm, only planning to step outside in her nightgown and robe to see if the world looks any different; instead she finds Elmont outside in the sunlit colonnade, and Elmont alone, his other Guardians long gone to their beds. He looks sleepy and content, and turns to smile at her at the sound of the latch on her door.

“Good morning, your majesty,” he says. “I trust you slept well?”

“Very well,” she grins. “I might ask the same of you, Captain. I rather thought you might have had plans for a busy night.”

His smile turns sly, and then he leans forward, an eager conspirator. “Who says I didn’t have one?”

“Elmont!” she gasps. For a brief moment she can’t decide whether to be ecstatic or horrified at what she has encouraged. “I thought you wouldn’t – didn’t you think – she’s married!”

He lowers his gaze and has the decency, at least, to look vaguely ashamed of himself. “Perhaps,” he chuckles, “I have finally learned to follow _your_ example, Isabelle.”

Most of the wedding guests melt away by noon, but Emma remains, and the four of them ride out into Cloister in the afternoon – just the four of them, Elmont bristling with armor and weaponry being their only protection (and very fine protection he is too). Isabelle throws herself joyfully into the ritual of visiting the people, of distributing gold, favors, and kindness on the event of a royal wedding, and takes an intense pleasure in sensing that she is indeed loved.

They are cantering back towards the castle as the sun starts to set when Jack slows his and Isabelle’s horses to a walk and grabs for hand. “Beautiful,” he says, his face open and full of gladness. “All of us,” he adds, and Isabelle turns to look at Elmont and Emma racing across the fields ahead of them; suddenly, everything feels so uncomplicated, so simple.

“Yes,” she smiles. “All of us.”

The Queen of East Anglia and her retinue depart the following morning. Jack takes her hand and bows, while she sinks into a deep curtsey; she clasps Isabelle hard in her arms, and Isabelle finds herself already mourning this loss as much as she is happy to have found this friendship.

The only breach of protocol in Emma’s leaving is that she offers her hand to the Captain of the Guardians for a formal farewell, but Elmont’s reaction is appropriate in the extreme, bowing low over her proffered hand. Isabelle knows this is not their only goodbye: rising early again, she had witnessed their true parting, a long, lingering embrace in their shared colonnade, hands in tousled hair and bright pairs of blue eyes.

They don’t hear much of the Queen of East Anglia again, but what does filter through in letters and reports from their borders makes sense: that when her husband dies, she takes up arms and cheerfully carries on her kingdom’s defense against Mercia; that she is raising three fine young warrior sons, one of whom seeks to travel west to train with the Captain of Cloister, but who is eventually prevented.

Elmont remains as he ever was, which Isabelle reluctantly comes to accept. Happiness, it seems – and this is a lesson strangely and only slowly learned – comes in many forms other than her own.

 

**VII.**

Elmont is forty when Isabelle asks him to be godfather to her and Jack’s first child. It might be the first time in her life that she’s ever seen him rendered speechless. It is a boy, whom they name Alfred; by the time he is two years old and his little sister, Eofe, is born Elmont has already had the Guardians’ smith forge the little prince two different suits of armor as he grows. It is a marvelous thing to watch Jack and Elmont both dote upon her daughter – the sensation of stepping back in time, of wondering whether this is what Brahmwell and Elmont looked like with her, is acute.

She finds that married life, motherhood, queenship, the acts of ruling – all of these things suit her, which she would not have expected of her younger self. A couple of minor wars come and go, causing but minimal losses of life and heaping more glory on Jack the Giant Slayer’s head, and the heads of his loyal men. The work of raising a son who respects his mother and will encourage his daughters is as much her job as it is Jack’s to teach him of the earth and the people who will be under his charge, or Elmont’s to teach him strategy, swordplay, and swiftness of foot. Teaching her daughter is rather easier, as all she need do is be herself.

By the time Alfred is fifteen, and it has become more than usually apparent that Elmont has four decades on his young charge, he is insisting that there is nothing more he can teach the young prince. Alfred is tall like Jack, and, astonishing his parents, announces that he intends to travel in the few years he has left until his majority – to other kingdoms in Albion, perhaps across the water, perhaps even as far as Rome. Elmont very nearly manages to go with him, and remains behind only when Alfred draws himself up and insists that the Captain of the Guardians will have a duel on his hands if he attempts to leave his place by the Queen’s side.

Her children understand her too well, Isabelle thinks. For Alfred and Elmont to be parted is an act of cruelty nonetheless, but one that both parties hide well – Alfred with long, erudite, loving letters home in the three years he is gone, and Elmont by throwing himself ever more diligently into his work. Eofe, who has her father’s coloring but her mother’s delicate, long frame, depends on him more than ever before; the kinship formed between mother and daughter in this respect escapes neither of them.

Once Alfred has returned home, and takes up the long-abandoned post of General of the Army – it was offered to Elmont years before, but, with a twist of amusement at the mere idea that he would ever leave the Guardians, it was declined – the years pass ever more quickly. And at nearly forty-five, with Alfred approaching twenty but with the wisdom of many more years than that, Isabelle thinks that a prediction of hers might be coming true after all.

Age has slowed Elmont only gradually, though if she recalls to mind any crystallized moment in time, it is easy for Isabelle to see how much he has changed. His hair peppers white, and he favors lighter armor over that which will tire him; his left shoulder pains him each spring, and he prefers to watch and shout instruction (still standing, though, never sitting) at his men as they train rather than teach by practical example. Gwyn, on the other hand, remains remarkably unchanged. Her face acquires lines, but they auger dignity rather than infirmity; her hands are assured as they ever were as they take care of the various scrapes and bruises Eofe and Alfred acquire in their more childish enthusiasms.

The sight of them together feels natural, and nothing more. Isabelle knows nothing of Elmont’s affairs since those heady days of her wedding – and in truth, she has long ago come to accept that whatever they might have been did not matter. The Captain and the Matron snipe at each other like teenagers, each word meant to cut but never hurt. They enjoy the laughter of the children at them; perhaps that is why they do it, though the long hours spent in conversation long after the royal pair have whirled away are meant for subtler things. Isabelle is more than ready to, and indeed does welcome Gwyn into her household; titles mean nothing, nor birthright neither, when it comes to those she will bring into her home.

She and Jack are halfway through putting together a secret, quiet plan for their abdication when they invite Elmont to their rooms on a midsummer’s evening and, halfway through a decanter of wine and with Alfred and Eofe both at study – he at statecraft, she at Latin, the better to read her favorite epics – the conversation turns lazily, as it is apt to do, to both the past and the future at once.

“You should tell them about Roderick, you know,” Elmont says, refilling his cup and then theirs. “The old rhyme is becoming distorted enough that they do not know the truth.”

“The truth?” Jack asks sleepily.

“A child’s bedtime story cannot capture the lessons we learned,” Elmont says, shaking his head as he sits again.

Isabelle frowns. This is somewhat unexpected of her oldest and dearest friend. “Elmont,” she says, fully prepared to tease him. “Are you saying we should tell our dear children that you are a hero, after all? My goodness. And here I thought that you were so discreet.”

“That I killed him is not what’s important about Roderick,” Elmont says, raising an eyebrow at her; she reaches over and squeezes his hand briefly in apology, for no, he would never make a boast out of taking a life. “But that someone who seemed a friend might not be – to acquire the judgement needed to take leave of those who had been close to you, or appearing so – Alfred will need to know that. Eofe, too.”

Jack’s eyes open, and he stirs uneasily in his seat. “Have we missed something?”

“No,” Elmont says quickly, and his thoughtful expression softens. “Forgive me – I think too often of preparation, even now. Alfred has greatness in him,” he continues, even softer. “Has he told you about his plans to unite all of Albion under one crown?”

“Good God,” Jack says, with a barking laugh. “Spare us.”

“Do you know, I think he might just succeed,” Elmont chuckles, and looks at Isabelle with nothing but certainty in his eyes. “He will be a credit to his parents.”

It is a wholly unremarkable morning in late spring the next year when Eofe comes stumbling into her parents’ bedchamber staggering and crying as if the whole world has shifted beneath her feet. By the time the monarchs arrive at the door to Elmont’s room – still connected to the barracks, though finally grander than what he had had in his youth – there is nothing more to be done.

He looks so peaceful – that is all that Isabelle can think. In truth, it is the only thing she would have allowed herself to think of this moment, and she is grateful beyond words that it is true.

Once the monks have prepared him, they all four sit in vigil by his side for two days and a night. When Isabelle finally leaves the room on the second evening and makes her way to the infirmary for something to treat Eofe’s headache, brought on by her tears, she finds Gwyn’s chambers cold and empty but for a note indicating that the matron has, begging Her Majesty’s pardon, decided to retire to the abbey convent for the remainder of her days. She will be happy there, she promises Isabelle, in her small, tidy hand – she will be happy in the sight of God.

For the first time in Cloister’s memory, a Captain of the Guardians is buried in the royal vault. Neither Isabelle nor Jack will have it any other way; Elmont rests within sight of Erik, that elder hero, and will do until they are all long forgotten.

Mere days after the funeral, the first message to reach Cloister from East Anglia in nearly two decades reaches the court. The letter is from the now-king, Ethelwerd, eldest son of the late Queen Emma, who is besieged by Vikings raiding from the east and indeed expects to have to capitulate to them at any time. He seeks refuge, and – reading between the lines of his flowery, desperate speech – a royal marriage for his youngest brother, Emma’s fourth son, who remains unattached in his own home and in danger. Though Isabelle, given her history, cannot countenance the idea of agreeing at a distance the price of her daughter, she swiftly sends a message back that the young man is welcome whenever he can manage to travel. It is the least she can offer to Emma’s memory; the recollection of her brings Isabelle pain at the thought of what might have been, but at least she has some hope of doing her justice.

When Emma’s son does eventually reach Cloister and presents himself, road-weary and alone, to the assembled court in the Great Hall, Isabelle abruptly finds that she cannot speak.

Osric, fourth Prince of East Anglia, has his mother’s complexion and both of his parents’ eyes. His compact, warrior-ready build, the laughter ingrained in his face, and the shock of tawny hair which stands upright at the slightest provocation are all his father’s. He and Eofe are smitten with each other instantly, and rightly so; celebratory bells peal across the kingdom, but that evening, Isabelle finds herself in darkness.

It is harder to fit down into the grate to the crypt than she remembers; has she grown, or has the castle shrunk? Perhaps it is just the encroaching stiffness of her joints.

“He’s beautiful,” she murmurs, kneeling at the side of Elmont’s tomb, her hand resting in the layer of dust just starting to settle over the stone. “You would be proud. I’m sure Emma was.”

Silence, though she fancies that above, this new shade of Elmont can hear her, and is gently laughing at her folly.

Jack finds her eventually – he is the only one, after all, still living who knows what this place means to her, and, since the giants, to him. He has understood it, too, knows who it is they now have under their roof. He sits next to Isabelle, and together, they keep watch.

“Funny,” Jack muses at one point, a smile on his lips. “Elmont would be mortified to think his bloodline was to be raised to royalty.” He’s right, and it makes Isabelle laugh, though she also knows from the startled, hopeful look on Osric’s face as he’d been introduced to Eofe that the young man will not take his good fortune, or his capacity to love, for granted. That, too, is something intrinsic he shares with Isabelle’s Captain.

“Will you come up?” Jack says, some time later. She knows the question has been coming, but that does not make answering it any easier.

“It has been a long time since I wanted anything,” she whispers, reaching over to take her husband’s hand. “For all these years, all my long-held desires were fulfilled.”

“You know they still are,” he prods kindly, and the heavy weight of the truth of what he says settles over her slowly, penetrates her bones. “We have lost too much to forget them now.”

She takes Jack’s hands, and follows him to her son, to her daughter, to her kingdom, and to friends long gone; she follows him back into the light.

**FIN**

*


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A small addition, which requires some explanation - my dear friend [kenobrea](http://kenobrea.tumblr.com/) managed to fall madly in love with Gwyn and Gwyn/Elmont (or rather 'gywnmont') when she read _So Spake Albion_ , and lo, a little while later I decided that it absolutely made sense to write a slice-of-life-half-porn ficlet for them. 'Cause they're adorable.
> 
> They're even more adorable in Brea's amazing fanart of them - check them out [here](http://kenobrea.tumblr.com/post/131914656100/in-search-of-elmont-bandages-in-hand), [here](http://kenobrea.tumblr.com/post/132489446510/im-obsessed-with-a-character-commonplacecaz), [here](http://kenobrea.tumblr.com/post/132555838600/remember-when-i-said-im-obsessed-with), and [here](http://kenobrea.tumblr.com/post/132568656800/i-am-gwynmont-trash-and-i-dont-even-care)! The idea that the Wardens wear the same sort of embossed vests as the Guardians wear engraved cuirasses is hers.

*

The sweating sickness comes to Cloister the summer Isabel turns sixteen. It is a not-irregular occurrence, and Gwyn has lived (and nursed) through several such epidemics; the kingdom’s losses are mourned, and felt keenly, but there is something about the disease’s symptoms, its clammy chills and sudden burning fevers which seem entirely appropriate to the violent weather brought by summer thunderstorms, and so they must simply endure.

And besides – it is not the plague, at least.

It is almost not a surprise, either, that Isabel herself falls victim to it, this time. Gwyn was not yet Chief Warden when the Queen of Cloister passed, but she was there nonetheless, and watched the stricken monarch pass with sweetened water, so ineffective, dripping from her fingers; she tries, as best she can, not to let the same panic she had felt then rise in her when the Guardians hurry through her door on an afternoon heavy with haze, with Isabel swaddled close in to Elmont’s chest, but it is difficult. It takes the deepest breath she can muster, the firm grasp of Elmont’s hand on her shoulder, to summon the strength of voice she needs to direct her Wardens, who cluck and shriek with despair at the idea of their beautiful charge brought low.

“The King wants to see her,” Elmont says, already piling blankets high; the first stage of the sickness brings intense cold and chills, and Isabel looks very small indeed in the bustle of swirling skirts around her. “May he – ”

“He may not,” Gwyn retorts sharply, and raises her voice. “Everyone who has not yet touched her, leave the Halls immediately! We cannot afford to let it spread.”

The rush to leave is quick and chaotic; she is alone, very soon, with Elmont and the two girls who had helped him to put Isabel down, neither of whom look a day older than the Princess herself, and just as pale, with fear.

Elmont looks at Gwyn, all bright eyes and earnest battlefield competence. “Tell me what to do,” he says, and Gwyn nods, and does.

It is a long day, which stretches quickly into night. The cold lasts for hours, and is painful, sending shocks of sensation through the princess’s limbs; Isabel mumbles snatched words which Gwyn is not sure she understands, but she does make out a name, once, and sees Elmont grit his teeth at the mention of the recently-arrived Lord Roderick. The two young Wardens – Aeva and Hilla, both skinny and shaking in their new doublets, their embroidery still stiff – follow Gwyn’s lead meekly and swiftly, keeping their eyes bashfully lowered as Elmont, cursing under his breath at Isabel’s distress, gathers the princess in close and murmurs that she should forget about her marriage, just for a moment, and listen to him tell her stories about dragons.

At dusk, Gwyn sends Hilla to the door to tell the King, who has been pacing outside, that the fever has turned to heat. The previously so-useful blankets go scattering as Isabel shoves them weakly away, making a mockery of the neatness of Gwyn’s ward; Aeva, with a blink, hurries after them herself without prompting, leaving Gwyn and Elmont to have their hands meet on Isabel’s forehead, pressing cold compresses everywhere they see a thick bead of sweat.

Elmont does not need to be asked to turn away when Gwyn tells him Isabel’s thin shift must be changed; seeing him standing at the window and watching the moon rise, Gwyn wishes she had the breath to thank him. The girls have been sneaking admiring looks at him throughout their mutual ordeal, and Gwyn cannot in truth blame them for it; his determined good cheer has put them at ease, prompted them to appreciate all the more Gwyn’s orders when they see him taking them as readily as they.

And it is not his first smile of the day, despite it all, when Gwyn puts her hands gently to Isabel’s jaw, near midnight, as Aeva, swaying with fatigue, refreshes their charcoal lamps, and finds that Isabel’s fever has broken. They have a few more hours ahead of them, yet, because victims of the sweat sometimes slip away, quietly, in the wake of their ordeal; it is the two young Wardens, in fact, who give into their fatigue first and crawl into nearby cots as Gwyn quietly whispers and shakes Isabel through the early hours of morning, until she is satisfied that the hollow-eyed princess is smiling as she falls asleep again, that her skin is cool to the touch and that she turns and yawns in her slumber rather than slipping into a silent, mortal reverie.

“Well?” demands the King, when Gwyn puts her head around the doorway.

“She will be well, Sire.”

“Thank God.” Brahmwell’s relief is physical, his exhaustion visible in every sagging muscle as, behind him, the gathered Guardians break into a ragged cheer. “How long must you all stay in there?”

“A day, to be safe, Your Majesty. We must wait to see if any of us are infected.”

“Very well,” Brahmwell sighs. “Good luck to you, Lady.”

All is quiet as Gwyn hauls the heavy door closed again and, wiping her brow, makes her way to her smaller, inner sanctum – her chamber is an apothecary’s dream, thick with the scent of hanging herbs as they dry and shrivel for use in poultices, her thick glazed windows shoved open to the (slightly) cool night air.

Elmont is already there, and, as always, either totally unashamed or oblivious of her presence; despite her fatigue, Gwyn finds the energy to smirk as she crosses her arms and plants herself in her doorway, watching as he pulls his sodden shirt and doublet over his shoulders. The scar of his injury at the hands of the Mercians, which she tended so carefully three years prior, has turned white and spidery as it wends its way across his back.

“And here I thought you had come to help, not to show off as usual,” she says gently, and by the time his tousled head emerges from the clinging fabric he already has an eyebrow raised and his mouth half-open, as though to send back one of his typical retorts.

“No,” she says, forestalling him, with one hand raised. “I’m sorry. Please, do what you will.”

“And if my will is to show off for you?” he teases, and then laughs, making sure to keep his voice low, as he turns away from her, drops his tunics, and reaches into one of her cabinets for one of the clean shirts she keeps for his band of miscreant knights. “We should get some sleep.”

Gwyn frowns and shifts where she stands. “Are you not worried about Isabel?”

“She is asleep, and under your care,” he says simply. “How much safer could she be?”

She feels the compliment instantly, down in her stomach; and it unlocks something in her, too, something fast and shuddering. Elmont is by her side as she gasps and struggles not to double over; all her fear and anxiety for the one she cares about, she realizes, more than her own life, seems destined to come flooding out of her, and she is glad to have Elmont’s shoulders to cling to as she shakes.

“She’s alright, Gwyn,” he whispers, one hand tangled in her hair, the other sliding soothingly across her back. “Isabel is alive. She’s alright…”

“I was too busy to pray,” she says, absurdly, into his chest. “I should give thanks to God – ”

“And these,” Elmont says, with a small chuckle, and takes one of her hands in his, pressing a brief kiss to her knuckles. “I seem to remember they played their part.”

Gwyn is half-crying, but his blasphemy does its work; she sniffs, smiles through wiping at her eyes. “Were you not frightened?”

“Petrified, my dear. And still worse, perhaps,” he says. He is looking down at her hands with a most peculiar expression on his face, the sort of look he normally reserves for a scolding after Isabel has led him on a merry chase, but different, somehow. “We may yet be next.”

“Too late to do anything about that now,” Gwyn murmurs.

She reaches behind her, then, hardly aware of what she is doing, and her fingers find the iron-ringed handle of the door; it creaks as she pulls it shut behind her, the rasp of the lock muffled in the fetid air.

She has always thought there was something strange about these summer days, she remembers, distantly. The sweating sickness is only one of the signs – there are the low, weighty clouds which hang over fields thick with crops, lightning strikes in the early evenings taken as signs of supernatural power, migrations of birds and the brisk heat of fires set by nature or warlords. Sick princesses, and now she herself, Lady Gwyn, Chief Warden of Cloister’s Halls of Healing, in the arms of the Captain of the Guardians, both of them sticky with summer’s sweat and not knowing if they are to survive long enough to see their princess wake.

She’s never allowed herself much thought on the subject of Elmont’s loves – not only because she had never thought herself among them, but because it had never seemed important to him, either. He has flirted with her Wardens for years (or perhaps, she thinks, merely accepted their determined advances in the only way he knows how), he has been the admiration of many a local or visiting noblewoman; but he has never made half-wives of them that she has ever heard, nor has his friendship with her seemed to progress any further than what she has wanted from him – namely, the utter trust and assurance both of them have expected of each other that they are equal to the sacred tasks they have been assigned.

Maybe, she thinks, as she drowsily tilts her neck into the gentle press of his mouth, she had been mistaken in the meaning of all of that. Perhaps he had loved so much, and so widely, that she had mistaken it for indifference.

Elmont lifts his shirt again with her help, snickers against her collarbone at the wander of her fingers along his back and mutters something very rude and sly about inspecting her handiwork. Taking it as the challenge it is meant to be, Gwyn slides her hands lower, and his groan is quickly cut off as she kisses him, acutely aware in some part of her mind that they are close to being overheard; his next kiss is apologetic, as is the brush of his hand down her chest, undoing the ties of her doublet and shift, grown clammy over the hours of her exertion.

He puts aside her embroidered, storied vest with the same reverence Gwyn knows he treats his armor before tugging her back into his arms. She wants him, she realizes now, quite desperately; wants some assurance that they have the strength _not_ to die today, and so it is with shaking hands and a firm press between them that they manage to divest her of her skirts, and him of his boots. He tugs her to him fiercely as the last of her broadcloth falls from her hips; normally so poised, they are both clumsy as they fall onto the edge of her low boxbed, her knees sharp around his waist as she arches up and lets his mouth reach her breasts, her fingers deep in his hair and her own falling into her eyes.

From that moment, she thinks of very little.

She wakes again when, she guesses, it has been light for nearly an hour; this close to midsummer, the sun hardly sets at all, and the days are very long. Disentangling herself from Elmont takes longer than she expects, and is done with more regret than she wanted; crossing over to her window, she washes her face and hands in the basin of cool rainwater she collects there, presses her wet fingers to her temples, to the nape of her neck, trying to ward off oncoming heat.

Elmont turns groggily onto his side as she dresses, looks half-lidded and sleepily up at her. “Isabel?” he rasps.

Gwyn opens the door a fraction, knowing the crack and rattle of the door will be heard – across the Halls, the princess is stirring beneath her blankets, and Aeva, flushed but happy, looks back at Gwyn with a wide, tired smile.

Gwyn closes the door again, walks quietly back to Elmont, sits by his side. “She is quite alright, Captain,” she says, gently, and Elmont’s eyes slide closed again with relief. “And how do you?”

“Very well,” he says, and lifts one of her hands towards him, brushes a scratchy kiss against her palm. “And better now, I think.”

“My treatment was a success, I take it?” she asks archly.

“As ever,” he laughs.

“Then it is time you were discharged from my care,” she says, softer, and leans down to kiss him just as gently. “Are you agreed, Sir Knight?”

“I am, Lady,” he murmurs, and, with a huff, sits up and reaches for his shirt.

She leaves him behind as she emerges into the Halls; knowing, at least, that if she is to fall ill, she will face Death on his roads with no regrets.

*


End file.
